This new post from the Mind Tree blog (at hurricanesoftware.com) asks the question "why do you care about friendly URLs in PHP applications?"

Nice URLs, readable URLs, search-engine-friendly URLs. Different names same deal. [...] Turns out this isn't all that hard with PHP - in fact it can turn into something that's very useful from more than just a readability viewpoint.

He shows how to use mod_rewrite and an .htaccess file to automatically grab the request and map it to the right place. Then, the PHP script looks at the incoming data and pushes the correct page back out to the browser. He's also included some modifications to the original idea that allow for numeric grouping and named groups for rewriting content.

Jonathan Snook has posted a helpful trick for CakePHP users out there looking to secure sections of their site away from "normal users" and keep it only in the hands of the admins.

I just wanted to document this for easy future reference but if you don't want to hook up a complex user adminstration with authorization components, you can simply specify that the admin path be password protected in either your .htaccess file or in your httpd.conf.

This method is actually one of the built-in methods Apache has for restricting access (http authentication) that he's placed on his "/admin" directory. Call htpasswd to create the password file and you're all set to go.